


My Past Come Back to Save Me

by ranereins (shadowintime)



Category: Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fix-It, Gen, Hallucinations, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-01-01
Updated: 2013-01-01
Packaged: 2017-11-29 19:56:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/690842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowintime/pseuds/ranereins
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rick starts hallucinating and seeing Shane. At first, he just wants Shane to go away, to leave him alone, but as time goes on he begins to find it difficult to function without his presence.</p>
<p>Sort of a fix-it fic, so spoilers for 3x09 and onward.</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Past Come Back to Save Me

**Author's Note:**

> As I was watching 3x10 - Home, I was talking to a my friend and beta [sgflutegirl](http://archiveofourown.org/users/sgflutegirl/pseuds/sgflutegirl) about how I felt that it would have been so much better if Rick was hallucinating Shane instead of Lori. She agreed.  
> I think it would have been interesting for Shane to just randomly show up and start telling Rick that's not how he would have done things or try and be supportive and tell him that he's doing the best he can... just constantly popping up and adding his two cents to the situation. This is the result of that idea. It kind of took on a life of it's own.

The first time he’d seen him, there were strangers in his home, asking to stay and promising they were good people. Rick turned and wiped his upper lip with the back of his hand; it was a nervous tick that he got when he had big decisions to make. He froze as he caught sight of a figure on the upper landing. After so long of living in a world where the monsters seemed to almost magically appear, his first instinct was to draw his gun and shoot. Luckily, his brain quickly caught up with his instincts as he recognized the person.

Rick looked away, looked at the people around him, then back up to the landing. No… no, it couldn’t be, there was no way. He looked back at the man who spoke for the group of strangers and tried to find words for the man, give him a simple yes or no answer even, but his brain was too busy searching for a plausible reason for what he was seeing.

He looked back to the platform where Shane was leaning against the railing, hip cocked to one side like always, looking very much alive and well. Shane was wearing those green cargo pants that were about a size too big now and he was always pulling up, the belt threaded through the loops pretty much a useless decoration, and a plain black t-shirt that managed to look dirty regardless of the color’s ability to hide grime. His hair was all shaved off, just like it had been the last time Rick had seen him and he had a scrape on his forehead.

Rick tried to start again, to give the stranger an answer, ‘alright, but on a trial basis, understand?’, when Shane shook his head no. Rick’s brow furrowed and he wanted so badly to ask ‘you know something I don’t?’ but some still rational part of his brain reminded him that Shane was just a hallucination. Wasn’t he? No, he was… he had to be. Rick had killed him on Hershel’s farm. He remembered Shane’s hot blood spilling out past the knife and onto his hand, he remembered Carl shooting Shane, he remembered his stomach tearing itself apart for weeks afterwards as he thought over everything and tried to figured out how he could have changed things.

It vaguely registered that Hershel was asking him something. All Rick heard though was Shane saying “Don’t do it man. We don’t know these people. We can’t risk it, we’ve lost too many already. And after Woodbury… hell, these people could have been sent by the psycho running that town. What if Glenn or Maggie accidently said something? The way they were being tortured, they might not have even realized they said anything!”

“No! No you go away!”

Shane looked hurt. “After all the time you spent wishing I was still around? Don’t be like that brother.”

“You’re not here, you’re not real!”

“So?” Shane asked as though it were the most minor of details.

Rick didn’t remember the strangers leaving. He didn’t remember anything but Shane pushing away from the railing and making his way down to the bottom level. Rick ran up the stairs, away from Shane, and made his way to the showers they’d found just the other day. He turned the water on full force and stuck his head under the cold spray. When he opened his eyes, fighting against the sting of the chlorinated water, Shane was there, leaning against the tiled wall with a bottle of all-in-one shampoo and body wash, holding it out to Rick.

“Use the whole bottle man, it’s gonna take it to get you cleaned up,” Shane said with a small smirk.

“You’re not here! You died! I… I killed you,” Rick stammered, his voice cracking as all the emotion he’d been holding in about Shane’s death bubbled to the surface.

“Well, I did try to kill you first, so I guess it was fair,” Shane replied thoughtfully. “Women man, they get in your head and really mess you up.”

“She’s dead.” Rick’s voice was almost a whisper. “Lori… she’s…

“Yeah, I know.”

Rick turned off the shower and stared at his old friend as the water in his hair ran down his face and chest, soaking the collar of his filthy button down shirt. “Some days I miss her… some days I hate her for what she did to us, to Carl… the baby.”

Shane nodded and then smiled a little. “The baby, she’s beautiful man. She’s got my nose and your lips, Lori’s eyes.”

“How am I supposed to explain everything to her when she grows up? If she grows up.”

“She’ll grow up; probably break some hearts like her mama.”

“I don’t know.” Rick turned and leaned against the wall next to Shane. “Seems like every day someone else is dyin’. Maybe none of us are gonna survive this thing.”

Shane turned and gave him a serious, almost scolding look. “I don’t wanna hear you talkin’ like that brother,” he said, pointing a finger at him. “Somebody’s gotta survive this thing and if nobody else here makes it, it’s gotta be you and Carl and the baby. Got that?”

Rick nodded slowly. “I’m tryin’. It’s just… it’s so hard. Seems like no matter what I do, somethin’ always happens that I’m not prepared for, that I can’t stop, and we’re burying another body.”

“If the freakin’ zombie apocalypse was easy, it wouldn’t be an _apocalypse_. Things happen, things beyond your control. You can’t beat yourself up for that stuff.”

Rick nodded again. “Daryl calls her Lil Asskicker… the baby. Carl named her Judith.”

Shane smiled. “I like Lil Asskicker. Reminds me of the names we came up with when Lori was pregnant with Carl.”

“If it’d been up to us, he’d probably been named Skywalker or somethin’,” Rick said with a chuckle.

“I always liked Batman.” Shane and Rick shared a laugh.

The smile drained from Rick’s face after a minute. “I miss those days. I wish we could just rewind everything, go back to that.”

“Me too brother. It’d be nice not to be dead.” Shane sat the bottle of shampoo and body wash back in the shower caddy.

Rick gave Shane a sad, regretful look. “You gotta know that if I’d seen any other way…”

“I know. I don’t blame you, not even a little bit. Lori, her I blame some, but it was mostly me.” Shane shifted on his feet and he shook his head sadly. “I don’t know what got into me. I never, ever looked at her that way before the world went to hell man, you gotta know that. But my best friend, the man I depended on to help me with anything I couldn’t handle on my own was dead, or at least I thought ya were, and I was just trying to hold it all together and everything seemed to be going to shit a little more everyday and… I dunno, I was just looking for something in all the crazy to hold on to. Lori somehow became that… she was the closest thing I had to you. And then, once it got in my head, I just couldn’t get it out.”

“I can understand that,” Rick said, staring at his feet as he splashed at the water pooling around them. “I wish you’d told me that though, cause I just couldn’t understand it. I couldn’t understand how things got to be the way they were.”

“This world man, it destroys things.”

“It destroys people too. And not just physically.”

“Stop it.”

“Stop what?”

“Beating yourself up. You’re doing the best you can… way better than I could have ever done.”

Rick gave him a disbelieving look.

“Yeah, yeah, I know I was going around tellin’ everybody I could do better, but I was tryin’ to be somethin’ better than what I knew I was becomin’. Somethin’ that’d impress Lori, yeah, but also somethin’ that’d let me justify the things I was doin’. Despite it all, when I looked in the mirror, I could see myself spinnin’ out of control. And the more I tried to fix things, the worse it got.”

“That’s what’s happenin’ to me.”

Shane shook his head. “No, it’s not.”

Rick snorted. “I’m standin’ here talkin’ to my dead best friend… if that’s not losin’ it, I don’t know what is.”

“You’re tired, mentally and physically, you’re fighting an uphill battle, got the weight of the world on your shoulders, and you feel completely alone in this thing now that Daryl’s gone,” Shane said, laying out the situation. “Brother, I’m here ‘cause you need a damn friend. Someone you can talk to, say all the things you can’t or won’t tell anyone else.”

Rick stared at him for a moment as the tears welled in his eyes. “I just want this to be over with!”

“I know.” Shane pulled him into a hug.

“I just honestly don’t know how much longer I can do this,” Rick sobbed, clinging desperately to Shane.

“You’re gonna make it though this shit even if I have to drag you through it kicking and screaming. Failure is _not_ an option, you hear me?” Shane pulled back slightly to look at Rick.

Rick was lost in the feel of Shane’s body against his and the strong, comforting hands now on his shoulders. He stared at the hand on his right shoulder and marveled in the way they felt, their weight on his shoulders… so very real.

Shane removed one of his hands to give Rick a light slap. “You hear me?”

Rick nodded. “Yeah, I hear ya.”


End file.
